tribe of science
jstemwedel | April 22, 2009So far in this series, we've talked about ways that attempts to have a dialogue about animal research can be frustrated by inability to agree on a shared set of facts as a staring point or by unclarity about the positions people are trying to put forward. Today's featured impediment to dialogue has less to do with the mechanics of laying out and engaging with a clear argument and more to do with reasons people might be fearful even to voice their positions:
Ignoring the impact of the tactics used to advance a position.
The philosopher Kant made a famous statement that he who wills an end…
jstemwedel | April 21, 2009Today we discuss an impediment to dialogue about animals in research that seems to have a special power to get people talking past each other rather than actually engaging with each other:
Imprecision about the positions being staked out.
Specifically, here, the issue is whether the people trying to have a dialogue are being precise in laying out the relevant philosophical positions about animals -- the position they hold, the position they're arguing against, the other positions that might be viable options.
Why is imprecision about your philosophical position a dialogue blocker? It tends…
jstemwedel | April 20, 2009As we continue our look at ways that attempted dialogues about the use of animals in research run off the rails, let's take up one more kind of substantial disagreement about the facts. Today's featured impediment:
Disagreement about whether animals used in research experience discomfort, distress, pain, or torture.
This disagreement at least points to a patch of common ground shared by the people disagreeing: that it would be a bad thing for animals to suffer. If one party to the discussion accepts the premise that animal suffering is of no consequence, that party won't waste time haggling…
jstemwedel | April 19, 2009As with yesterday's dialogue blocker (the question of whether animal research is necessary for scientific and medical advancement), today's impediment is another substantial disagreement about the facts. A productive dialogue requires some kind of common ground between its participants, including some shared premises about the current state of affairs. One feature of the current state of affairs is the set of laws and regulations that cover animal use -- but these laws and regulations are a regular source of disagreement:
Current animal welfare regulations are not restrictive enough/are too…
jstemwedel | April 18, 2009Today we continue our look at the reasons that attempts to have a dialogue about the use of animals in scientific research routinely run aground.
Dialogue, you'll remember, involves the participants in the dialogue offering not just their views but also something like their reasons for holding those views. In addition, in a real dialogue, participants engage seriously with each other's positions. Serious engagement doesn't necessitate that one of the positions on offer ends up persuading everyone in the dialogue, but everyone is supposed to be open to considering each view -- and open to…
jstemwedel | April 17, 2009In a post last month about an animal rights group targeting a researcher's car with an incendiary device, I closed by expressing my profound pessimism at the prospects of having a serious dialogue about animal rights:
As a philosophical position, the case for animal rights is not completely empty or indefensible. However, as it's being propagated "in the wild", as it were, the case for animal rights is being made with lies and intimidation. Among rational people, this is a bad way to make a case for your position. Thus, it seems to me, people arguing in good faith for the animal rights…
jstemwedel | April 11, 2009One arena in which members of the public seem to understand their interest in good and unbiased scientific research is drug testing. Yet a significant portion of the research on new drugs and their use in treating patients is funded by drug manufacturers -- parties that have an interest in more than just generating objective results to scientific questions. Given how much money goes to fund scientific research in which the public has a profound interest, how can we tell which reports of scientific research findings are biased?
This is the question taken up by Bruce M. Psaty in a Commentary…
jstemwedel | April 9, 2009Earlier this week, Ed Yong posted an interesting discussion about psychological research that suggests people have a moral thermostat, keeping them from behaving too badly -- or too well:
Through three psychological experiments, Sonya Sachdeva from Northwestern University found that people who are primed to think well of themselves behave less altruistically than those whose moral identity is threatened. They donate less to charity and they become less likely to make decisions for the good of the environment.
Sachdeva suggests that the choice to behave morally is a balancing act between the…
jstemwedel | March 31, 2009In a pair of earlier posts, I looked at the ethical principles Matthew C. Nisbet says should be guiding the framing of science and at examples Nisbet discusses of ethical and unethical framing. Here, consider some lessons we might learn from the framing wars. I'm hopeful that we can gain insight about the folks interested in communicating science, about the various people with whom they're trying to communicate, and perhaps even about the approaches that might be useful (or counterproductive) in trying to sell scientists on the utility of the framing strategy.
This post is not so much a…
jstemwedel | March 30, 2009In my last post, I looked at a set of ethical principles Matt Nisbet asserts should be guiding the framing of science. In this post, I consider the examples Matt provides as the "DO" and "DON'T" pictures for the application of these guiding ethical principles.
First, Matt examines an example of framing done well:
In January 2008, the National Academies issued a revised edition of Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a report intentionally framed in a manner that would more effectively engage audiences who remain uncertain about evolution and its place in the public school curriculum. To…
jstemwedel | March 23, 2009Some commenters on my last post seem to be of the view that it is perfectly fine for scientists to pull numbers out of thin air to bolster their claims, at least under some circumstances.
I think it's a fair question to ask: In which circumstances are you comfortable giving scientists the go-ahead to make up their numbers?
One suggestion was that scientists ought to be "permitted to use ordinary language meanings of words and colloquialisms in their non-peer reviewed discourse" -- or at least, to do so in discussions on blogs. I take it this assumes that "ordinary language meanings of words…
jstemwedel | March 21, 2009When scientists make claims with numbers they have clearly pulled out of thin air. For example:
Ultimately, success is only about 0.01% based on 'strategies' like those espoused on this blog, and 99.99% on simply doing good science and explaining a good plan well.
Is commenter Dave making a subtle joke here? Or what?
Because the way science is supposed to be played, making up frequencies (or probabilities, for that matter) is Just Not Done.
jstemwedel | March 19, 2009
Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meet Objectivity and Logic.
by Frederick Grinnell
Oxford University Press
2009
Scientists are not usually shy when it comes to voicing their frustration about the public's understanding of how science works, or about the deficits in that understanding. Some lay this at the feet of an educational system that makes it too easy for students to opt out of science coursework, while others blame the dearth of science coverage in our mass media.
Rather than casting about for a villain, cell biologist Frederick Grinnell has written a book…
jstemwedel | March 18, 2009Over at Neurotopia, SciCurious has a fabulous post on the question of who is a scientist. Her discussion really teases out a lot of important nuances, and I think her analysis is spot on.
I'm going to add my two cents simply to connect Sci's discussion with an issue I've pondered before: the boundaries (or lack thereof) between who we are and what we do.
When someone says, "I'm a scientist," at least in common usage, there is some ambiguity about what precisely he or she is asserting:
I'm employed as a scientist (or am qualified to be and am seeking such employment).
I've studied science.
I…
jstemwedel | February 24, 2009I've been watching an interesting discussion unfolding at DrugMonkey, prompted by a post at Science Bear's Cave, about whether not irritating your lab group's principal investigator ought to be your highest priority. As DrugMonkey notes, such a strategy can have bad consequences:
If there is a scientific trainee who fears to mention to the Boss that the printers aren't working, this trainee sure as hell isn't going to mention "Oh gee, I think that figure you are so amped about from that other postdoc is totally faked". And who knows how far this PI-pleasing attitude might carry one.
Is the…
jstemwedel | February 13, 2009One of my correspondents told me about a situation that raised some interesting questions about both proper attribution of authorship in scientific papers and ethical interactions between mentor and mentee in a scientific training relationship. With my correspondent's permission, I'm sharing the case with you.
A graduate student, in chatting with a colleague in another lab, happened upon an idea for an experimental side project to do with that colleague. While the side project fell well outside the research agenda of this graduate student's research group, he first asked his advisor whether…
jstemwedel | February 11, 2009(Written for the inaugural edition of the Diversity in Science blog carnival, with big thanks to DNLee for launching it.)
Back in the spring and autumn of 1992, I was a chemistry graduate student starting to believe that I might actually get enough of my experiments to work to get my Ph.D. As such, I did what senior graduate students in my department were supposed to do: I began preparing myself to interview with employers who came to my campus (an assortment of industry companies and national labs), and I made regular visits to my department's large job announcement binder (familiarly…
jstemwedel | February 4, 2009There's a lively discussion raging at the pad of Dr. Isis (here and here) about whether there isn't something inherently obnoxious and snooty about identifying oneself as having earned an advanced degree of any sort. Commenter Becca makes the case thusly:
"Why are people threatened by the idea that a profession ought to have professional standards, anyway?"
1) It gives the gatekeepers even more power than they already have. Given a world where professional credentials are denied to certain groups, it can get a bit ugly. I think the worst part is that people who are traditionally trodden…
jstemwedel | January 29, 2009You may recall the case of Luk Van Parijs, the promising young associate professor of biology at MIT who was fired in October of 2005 for fabrication and falsification of data. (I wrote about the case here and here.)
Making stuff up in one's communications with other scientists, whether in manuscripts submitted for publication, grant applications, scientific presentation, or even personal communications, is a very bad thing. It undermines the knowledge-building project in which the community of science is engaged. As an institution serious about its role in this knowledge-building…
jstemwedel | January 19, 2009There were some really good discussions of ally work in the gender in science session led by Zuska, Alice, and Abel and in the race in science session led by Danielle Lee and AcmeGirl.
One of the issues that has become clearer to me is that there is an inescapable asymmetry in the relationship between allies and those (like scientists of color or women scientists) they are trying to support. (I think the discussion at Samia's blog helped me feel like I got it well enough to put into words.) An ally is someone who wouldn't have to care about the difficulties faced by members of the group s/…